Posted on 02/26/2025 2:40:54 PM PST by dennisw
In April 2023, Finland became the 31st member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, aligning itself with the United States, ending generations of Finnish military neutrality between the West and Russia.
The Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 provoked the move. The Finnish capital of Helsinki is just 200 miles from St. Petersburg. With under six million people, Finland would have little chance of stopping Russian aggression alone.
The threat isn’t idle. Russia has invaded Finland before, in November 1939. That attack can’t be excused as part of Russia’s defense against Nazi Germany. At the time, the Nazis and Stalin were allies dividing Eastern Europe.
The Finns know the Russians. And whatever you think about Ukraine’s corruption and oligarchs, Finland is a modern, free democracy. It hopes to stay that way.
So when this email about Donald Trump’s embrace of Vladimir Putin arrived unsolicited from a Finnish reader1, I thought it was worth sharing, in full and unedited. A lot of good people are very worried. ............................................
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Hi Alex,
Domestically, President Trump may be doing exactly what he was voted to accomplish. I have no take on it, naturally, not being an American. But internationally, is he singlehandedly rewriting the US foreign policy?
I used to consider the US our (and Europe's, and NATO’s and Canada's) friend, and Russia our common foe. Now it seems both are our foes. The narrative seems to tell that Trump and Putin have already divided the world into spheres of interest, and well, Eastern if not all of Europe is soon under another Warsaw Pact...
Having enjoyed your writing and political backdrop views over many years, both inside book covers and in other media, what is your take on all this? And do you and the American people believe Russia is as of this month no longer your enemy?
Has Trump simply decided Putin will offer him a better deal than Ukraine and to hell with the rest? Or is he simply being deceived? Does he buy Putin's lines (read: lies) because he admires the man so much? Or does Putin have Trump so deeply in his pocket that he does whatever he is told to do?
Or is it the exact opposite, and Trump is double- and triple-crossing Putin to ultimately push the Russians to step over a line and then be put firmly back in their place? Or have the two simply come to align on an anti-China stand, for Trump to have an ace up his sleeve against Xi and Putin trying to crawl out from underling position vs Xi?
I am not trying to offend any fans of Trump's politics, I am simply trying to make sense of the tectonic shift in who is an ally to whom and who considers whom a threat?
BR
Heikki
PS. My view: never even think of trusting a Russian politician. Full stop.
Yes -- the same people that pressured the Romanian Supreme Court of cancelling valid election results and the same ones that rigged our elections in 2020 and worked to imprison Trump before that last elections..
They are all variants of pretty much the same thing. The true exceptions would be, say, the rule of Elizabeth and (somewhat) Yeltsin.
Well, what a supporter of free speech you are.
Putin's mother baptized him as child and was devout Orthodox Christian and instilled the beliefs of Christianity into his son.
Again, it's only ethnic hatred or an agenda rooted in propaganda that would result in anyone denying that.
Americans enjoy a 1st Amendment; leftist foreigners not so much.
A point a certain crowd here and elsewhere seem to entirely miss. It's one of the reasons I keep saying so many posters don't understand Ukraine and Z-man's position at all. Which has very little to do with whether he is a "good guy" or not.
The question is, does Trump recognize that? He just doesn't seem like the type well versed on cultural and societal forces, outside the US. When he said yesterday (close paraphrasal) "I've been making deals all my life. It's all I know." ... that was a bit, um, troubling.
“Modern day Russia? Ukraine and Georgia with full consent of the people in the parts they entered.”<<<<<< That is 100% lie. You are a brainwashed Russian
“How many countries have we invaded in the past 35 years by comparison?”
We were stupid enough to invade 2 Muslim nations and blow money for years in both. 1000s our our soldiers died in the Muslim holes. But our intentions were good. The problem is that you cannot bring Democracy to Muslim nations
Russians intentions are never good when the invade Georgia, Crimea, Donetsk and Ukraine. Russians are drunk stupid lazy thugs. Instead of Improving Russia and their own brains and tech educations, they prefer invading their neighbors to steal their natural resources’ and wealth... to get something for nothing.
Maybe not so much. Finland has coordinated with NATO countries for a very long time. They just didn’t actually join NATO, as they figured it would spur Pooty’s paranoia, and (until 2022) Pooty had not conducted a major invasion.
We had far less of a reason to do so in either Iraq war than the Russians do in Ukraine.
The Russians absolutely are protecting the ethnic Russian population in Ukraine and protecting their naval base in Crimea, this after an illegal coup we fomented that installed a government hostile to both.
The Russians had far greater national security interests and far greater ties to the ethnic Russians in Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea than we did those in Kuwait.
But, you're unable to look at the situation objectively because your intense, irrational hatred of Russia or just because you're profiting off the war in Ukraine.
That is of course a very convenient argument, as you can then assert whatever you like.
In most democratic countries however causation goes the other way. If you had to deal with the popular will, what sort of argument would you use?
Those are relatively superficial. Anybody can claim Christianity and then behave entirely differently at other times. Many do, attending church regularly, etc. Some are pastors or priests. Some even believe their own lie. It’s one of evil’s best tricks.
It isn't paranoia when NATO chose to pursue expansion despite U.S. Secretary of States James Baker's “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990. It was part of a group of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991.
This is according to declassified U.S., Soviet, German, British and French documents posted today by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
That’s your opinion, and irrelevant. JimRob makes those decisions here. And just because someone is not precisely in your incredibly narrow slice of what you define as “right” does not make them a “leftist”. I’m basically a Reagan Republican, which is pretty far from your take. Are you gonna call me a “leftist” and tell me “speak when spoken to”, too?
And, Russia under Putin has banned LGBT propaganda. Marriage is between a man and a woman. There is no drag queen story hour. There are no sex changes on children or anyone. Abortions have declined.
Regardless of your ethnic hatred toward Russia, it, as a whole, has done as good a job at protecting Judeo-Christian values as the most conservative red states.
Stick it up your hind quarters, or the hind quarters of that leftist Spanish SOB you're sticking up for. Either way is fine by me.
What are you babbling about?
Your point is so weak, you can't even articulate it.
You're willingly blind if you can't figure out why valid election results were invalidated in Romania.
The masses there know exactly why.
You ascribe the attitudes of the Finnish leadership to bribery. You refuse to consider that they have their own analysis of the situation, or indeed that their stance is legitimate.
So conveniently you are not required to engage, dismissing the disagreement as bribery.
We are discussing the Finns, not the Romanians.
And we have not in fact heard from the bulk of the Romanians yet. TBD.
The “not one inch eastward” applied solely to territory that was the former East Germany itself. Goby himself has said that.
Further, NATO for 3 decades simply did not spend the money, place forces and equipment, etc., to be any sort of offensive threat to Russia. A Russia that, BTW, rattles the nuclear saber at the least thing, like the Ukies allowed to use ATACMS for counter attacks around Kursk.
The larger Euro countries in particular believed a major war in Europe was impossible - right up to the point Pooty invaded. Did you watch their pols carefully immediately after the invasion? They were incredulous. Some threat...
The real threat was cultural and societal, and to some degree, Russia surely didn’t want cheaper competition from Ukraine in the Euro oil and gas market.
IF the US had spent another 3-4% of GDP solely for the European Theater, for over a decade, and IF the Euro’s concurrently had gone to the 5% Trump is demanding, THEN your (and Pooty’s) argument might have a sliver of credence to it. But even then, Pooty had the nukes.
To quote a boss I once had: Money talks. Shit walks.
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